[ExI] Red

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Ben,
Thanks for putting so much into this.  If I'm wrong in any way, I sure want
to know, and I appreciate your help.

The reason we're working to canonize better terminology is because current
terminology is ambiguous and qualia blind.
Terminology is 90% of the problem.
When you say "red" you don't know if someone is talking about the property
of the strawberry, the light, something in the retina, or the final result
of perception: our conscious knowledge.
Also, traditional terminology separates phenomenal qualities from physics.
i.e. "the neural correlate of redness".  I'm interested in the physics of
redness, not the physics of the correlate of redness.

You're close, but you're missing a few things.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 8:01 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Brent,
>
> Your claims seem to me so extraordinary and so completely outside what I
> know about how brains work (and what science has taught us about things in
> general), that I thought it might be a good idea to confirm that you are in
> fact saying what it seems to me that you're saying.
>
> One problem I have is that your language is so obscure and elaborate that
> I have difficulty telling if I have in fact understood you or not.
>
> So, let me know which of the following I've got right and wrong, about
> what you are claiming:
>
> * Certain material substances (presently unknown) possess properties that
> can be called 'phenomenal qualities' (which means the feeling of being
> something, or what it is like to be or experience something).
>
> * These properties are /fundamental/ properties, i.e. low-level physical
> properties, on a par with electromagnetism, gravity, the strong and weak
> nuclear forces, etc.
>

Yes, but...
Phenomenal properties of physics have objectively observable causal
properties, but describing or naming these causal properties doesn't tell
you what they are like, without a dictionary.
We are already objectively detecting and describing these causal
properties; i.e. they are a subset of all the fundamental causal properties
we know.  We just don't know which causal properties are for which
qualities.
It's just that describing or naming them (like the word 'red') doesn't tell
you what they are like, without a dictionary.
It's like is 700 nm light red or green?  You can't know without a
dictionary.
We say the strawberry reflects red light because of its red property.  It's
like that, only the reflection of light is the wrong set of physics, as we
know redness is a property of something in the brain - not the strawberry.
Something in the brain has the redness property, not the strawberry.
Neurons can do subjective binding of these objectively observable
properties, enabling us to directly apprehend them.
Cause and effect observation is always different sets of causally
downstream properties - representing different things.  You always need a
dictionary to get back to the original.  Because of this, objective
observation can be mistaken.
Direct apprehension is infallible, the same idea as "I think, therefore I
am."



> * In order to experience the things we commonly experience (colours is
> just one example, but this must include things like fear, pleasure, hunger,
> fascination, etc., etc.), we must have some kind of interaction in our
> brains (presumably just our brains) with these unspecified substances.
> Absent this interaction, we are incapable of having the relevant
> experiences.
>

To me "interaction" is the wrong word.  Interaction is a fallible causa and
effect objective observation term.  Direct apprehension of what has the
property is different.


> * Because they are the result of (or perhaps because they *are*) some kind
> of interaction or relation with these substances, our subjective
> experiences are not actually subjective, but objective phenomena that can
> be, at least in principle, observed from outside.
>

Yes, because they "are" or because something has a redness property.  I'm
interested in redness, not what causes redness, or what redness causes.


>
> * (tentative) There is no actual difference between 'objective' and
> 'subjective' phenomena. Everything that we commonly experience is amenable
> to objective investigation, and everything that we regard as 'objective'
> is, at least potentially, an experience.
>

Yes.  We are already observing the causal properties of phenomenal
qualities, we just don't know which are which.  We just need to know which
is which.  We simply need a dictionary to tell us which physics is redness.

Each one of these claims is, to me, completely at odds with what we know
> about how the world works, so I'll be very happy if you can say that I've
> got them all wrong, and this is not what you think at all.
>
> ---
> Ben
>
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